Aims: To build and broaden audiences for contemporary visual art by creating a sustainable model for Audience Development; improve the quality of arts education services and increase access to the services for young people, marginalised people and communities; enable visual arts professionals to engage with audiences and work-based opportunities in the cross-border region.

Objectives:
Establish equity in knowledge and practice of Audience Development by sharing expertise across the partnership. To build capacity by raising expectations, creating new job roles, maintaining high quality output, sharing learning outcomes & creating a model for a sustainable partnership. To develop strategies for growing visual arts audiences in the cross-border region beyond the project. Reach new non-arts audiences through joint working between project partners & local organisations.
Reach visitors who attend other attractions through joint working with tourism agencies, leisure and heritage organisations.
Improve arts education services by developing the professional competencies of practitioners.
Establish equity of knowledge/practice of working with target groups by sharing expertise across the partnership. Use this knowledge to work with new non-arts partners.
Share learning outcomes with a wider professional network
Develop information tools and activities for visual arts professionals to locate and engage with markets/audiences in the CBR.
Highlight work opportunities and new ways of working through discussion/marketing/dissemination of new learning outcomes.
Position and market contemporary art as a new tourism product, adding value to the existing tourist offer.

Activity 1:

Project partners developed and delivered exhibitions, events and research and social practice placements over a 3-year period. Partner activities included consulting on areas of mutual interest, sharing curatorial expertise and working together on specific events to meet common needs. Each exhibition and placement was influenced by the cross-border context of the project and was developed and evaluated against a framework that contributed to a 3-year audience development plan for each partner organisation, adding value to its work as a whole, and meeting agreed outcomes. Research was undertaken at the start of the project and used as a baseline for each project partner to measure visitor numbers. Audience data continued to be collected over the project by the partners and by specialist audience evaluators in order to measure the impact of Audience Development strategies and inform future planning. Each partner made contacts with tourism, heritage & leisure organisations locally and sub-regionally.

Activity 2:

5 partners developed, delivered and evaluated a series of 5 learning sets to improve the competencies of arts educators working with 5 target groups: People with disabilities, marginalised people, young people 6-11, young people 12-23 and community, local & business groups. Through involvement in the Action Learning process each partner was able to develop their competencies, whatever their level of expertise.

Work placements were developed for artists, interns, employees & volunteers, designed to raise expectations and open up opportunities for working in the visual arts in the cross-border region. ‘Key-stage career’ work placements (Coup de Pouce & Short Residencies) for artists at partner venues improved competencies with audiences and markets. Placements for employees working at an operational level developed & shared organisational knowledge.

Training and networking events for artists, freelancers & micro-businesses developed competencies and professional networks around key issues of engaging with audiences, developing markets & developing artistic practice. Mini-conferences brought localised networks together and acted as a focus for developing an inclusive cross-border professional network.

Language learning sets took place over 3 years to support engagement with audiences, information & professionals.

Activity 1

24 exhibitions visited by more than 100,000 people; 10 research & social practice placements; 3-year Audience Development plans & 3-year tourism integration plans for Fabrica, Netwerk, L’H du Siège, Aspex & la malterie. Dissemination of audience evaluation models for developing local audiences; A year on year increase of non-arts audiences; maintenance of total audience numbers, with an increase to the end of 2011; 1 Developing Local Audiences film. 150 new non-arts partners involved in the exhibition projects, an average of 6 per exhibition; 1 mini-conference on working with locality & 1 on participative approaches for artists, organisations & local populations in developing an artistic territorial project. Competencies for arts educators; 1 animateur evaluation report disseminated through partner networks & as a downloadble pdf.

Activity 2

9 placements for artist-facilitators/animateurs in social settings. Improved professional competencies for arts educators; 1 animateur evaluation report disseminated through partner networks & as a downloadble pdf.232 new non-arts partners over 5 learning sets; 4 mini-conferences disseminating learning outcomes; 1 mentoring programme; outcomes of the learning sets disseminated; 1 learning report “Learning Across Borders” disseminated through partner networks & as a downloadable pdf. Non-arts audiences of 16,365.

Activity 3

2 new information/documentation centres at Netwerk & L’H du Siège; development of 3 existing documentation centres at Fabrica, Aspex & la malterie; 10 key-stage career work placements for artists; 17 work placements for employees & volunteers; 125 training & networking events; 2 mini conferences with disseminated outcomes; 18 participants in language learning activity; 168 work opportunities provided by the project; 131 work opportunities advertised through but not funded by the project; creation of a sustainable cross-border professional network.

All target groups at project purpose level were engaged in dialogue with the partners who helped to improve their offer to these groups through closer working, increased opportunity & the resources to tailor activity to each group. This has had a positive effect on the activity offered by each partner & opportunities for non-arts partners.

Final beneficiaries that took part directly (service users in health, social care and education sectors, marginalised & young people, local residents, workers and users of community organisations) benefited from the funding that enabled workshops to take place & the expertise that has been developed through research & sharing of skills and experiences drawn from each region related to working with specific target groups.

Artists, art & cultural workers, arts professionals, small & micro businesses and recent graduates have benefited from increased opportunities for professional development, through the commission of new work, events, project operational opportunities, increase events & networking opportunities and the advertisement of opportunities in the cross border region.

All partners have improved Audience Development capabilities, which has a direct impact on the local population in each area. One example of the success of this work is that Netwerk now has a dedicated member of staff to work on Audience Development, which will continue beyond the project, whereas previously there were not any staff working in this area. All partners are now reaching new marginalised audiences. This expertise and approach is part of each organisation making real organisational change. The impact of working with these marginalised groups, both in terms of benefits to the organisations and participants in each territory has been evaluated as part of the Activity 2 learning report – Learning Across Borders.

Successful European funding and working internationally has raised the profiles of partners with local agencies, stakeholders and policy makers improving chances for future funding. It has also built confidence within the organisations of working internationally.

The opportunities provided and training invested in partner employees, interns & volunteers, as well as for artists, arts professionals and arts educators, have improved the competencies of those working in the cross-border region, improved awareness of working in a cross-border context and increased accessibility to opportunities amongst a wider arts networks. This has help to create a more highly skilled and knowledgeable workforce in the visual arts sector in each territory.

The partners recognised that each organisation operated within its own regionally specific political and socio-economic context, methods of working could not be directly transferred on to other organisations in a simplistic way; but that the project and particularly the peer learning provided a stimulus for imaginative thinking around shared agendas and future programmes of individual organisations.

The impact of the cross border working has been documented in a series of learning reports that are part of the projects’ evaluation that can be downloaded as pdf’s from the LCP website http://lcpeurope.eu/

They include:

1. Learning Across Borders Report.

2. Three-year Audience Development Plans 2013-2016 for Fabrica, Aspex, Netwerk, L’H du Siège and la Malterie.

3. Tourism Integration Plan 2013-2016 for Fabrica, Aspex, Netwerk, L’H du Siège and la Malterie.

4. Animateur Learning Report

Fabrica developed a synergy with the Nuit Blanche/ White Night project, part of the Interreg IVa Channel programme and LCP exhibitions featured in the project in October 2009, 2010 & 2011. The LCP project also developed a synergy with the Permeate programme, a project to increase the diversity of the arts workforce in the South East region of the UK. Connections were also made and relationships developed with local, national and international events and festivals: Through Fabrica LCP was part of the Brighton Photo Biennial & the Brighton Digital Festival and Fabrica also developed synergies with Brighton Festival and the 2012 Cultural Olympiad. Through Netwerk LCP was part of the Boon 2012 festival and Open Monument Day 2012, which were national events in Belgium. Both la malterie and L’H du Siège participated in the Artists Open Studios festival, involving organisations in the Departement de Nord and Flanders; L’H du Siège also participated in the local Fête du Voisins and la malterie participated in Lille Art Fair and Lille 3000 both of which have an international reach. Aspex commissioned one LCP exhibition as part of Dickens 2012, a national festival celebrating the bicentenary of the birth of writer Charles Dickens and the 2012 Cultural Olympiad, The Lost Hour, Portsmouth Bookfest and Portsmouth Over 60s Festival.

All partners disseminated the project opportunities through their networks, la malterie & L'H du Siège are part of the CRI (regional) and FRAAP (national) networks and la malterie is a member of LEAD, a network of Euro regional arts organisations. Fabrica was part of the NAN network, the CVANSE (Contemporary Visual Arts Network South East) and the Brighton & Hove Arts and Creative Industries Commission. Fabrica, la malterie and L'H du Siège are part of the 50º Nord cross-border network.

Our project has allowed us to develop & deliver sustainable & strategic initiatives by working in long term strategic partnerships that no other funding programme allows. This programme supports working in a geographical area but across national borders, so creating unique opportunities for collaboration.

The project allowed us to address common needs & inequalities in expertise with common solutions & more effectively fulfil our missions to:

• increase access to our services

• add strength & capacity to the visual arts sector

• connect services to support the professional development of small cultural enterprises

• provide additional means to aid mobility in the cross-border region, opening up new employment opportunities.

• sharing of local, regional & global networks

• sharing of expertise, information, management across 3 countries

• development of professional competencies

• innovations in education & community development

• increased the profile of contemporary visual arts

The project partners agreed to share the cost to extend hosting of the LCP website until 2018 so the documentation of the valuable work that has been achieved can be used by all the partners. The LCP website will be used for several purposes; to share the results of work that has been carried in particular to developing new audiences; to share the commissioned work of artists in the cross border region and as an advocacy tool for the partners with their current and potential future stakeholders, funders and politicians. The partners agreed to maintain a link from the individual websites to the LCP website and to ensure that references are made to LCP in any future developments associated to the LCP project whenever possible. The downloadable reports include:
5 organisational Tourism Integration Plans 2013-2015
5 organisational Audience Development Strategies
Animateur Evaluation
Learning Across Borders report
Developing Local Audiences film

The quality of the partnership work that has taken place during the LCP project has meant we have an understanding of each other’s organisations and working practices. At the final steering committee meeting we agreed to endeavour to maintain links through artistic & audience development programmes & to continue to share information across professional development networks. We’ve made valuable contacts through 3 Research Visits & other shared events that were made across the region. As publically funded organisations in a difficult economic climate we will continue to research funding opportunities from diverse sources. The experience gained in working in partnership at a European level is invaluable for the future. Several partners have gone on to develop other EU funded partnerships.

It is an unpredictable economic climate for small publically funded organisations such as ours at the moment with all partners experiencing financial cuts to their national grants. This means EU funding will continue to be an important source of funding for the future since national funding will not fund such long term cross border working.

Fabrica, as lead partner, has been successful in securing funding for a new projet TAP (Time & Place 2012-2015) through the Interreg IVA Channel programme with partners in Calais, Caen and Norwich. It is also a project partner on an Interreg IVA channel project entitle ‘Au dela du Bleu – Waide’ (2012-15) with Amiens.

Fabrica, UK and Netwerk BE have jointly developed and submitted an application to the EU Culture programme with 2 new partners from Italy and Macedonia in November 2012. Netwerk is currently developing a EU Culture application with a Third Country for the May 2013 application deadline with partners from Germany, Poland and Canada.